Broadcom’s Car Gambit: 802.11ac/Bluetooth LE Combo IC

PARIS — Broadcom Corp. is making an aggressive wireless entry into the automotive market by rolling out what the company calls the industry's first automotive-quality 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth low energy (LE) combo chip.

While select automotive brands (such as Ford, BMW, and Chrysler) have already introduced models featuring WiFi capability using other variants of 802.11 protocols, this is their first look at Gigabit WiFi chips based on the 802.11ac standard -- whose ink is barely dry at the IEEE's working group.

Describing a very long product development cycle for cars, Luca De Ambroggi, senior analyst for automotive components and devices at IHS, calls 802.11ac "a perfect match" for automakers.

But he adds that Broadcom's introduction of the Gigabit WiFi chip so soon to the automotive market was "unexpected." While acknowledging that the move surprised him, De Ambroggi told us he expects other chip vendors such as Qualcomm and Marvell Technology to follow suit.

With its chips sampling today, Tom Ramsthaler, Broadcom's senior director responsible for product marketing of wireless connectivity, predicts that the first cars with 802.11ac will ship in 2018.

Why a car needs Gigabit WiFiDriving the Gigabit WiFi demand for automotive is both the rampant use of higher bandwidth multimedia inside cars and the growing number of mobile devices consumers are bringing into their cars.

Broadcom, leveraging its integration expertise and its leading position in the wireless connectivity chip market, is rising to the occasion by integrating 802.11ac, MAC, PHY, RF, Bluetooth LE, and software on a single chip. The new combo chip allows "uncongested 5GHz video to coexist concurrently with 2.4 GHz Bluetooth hands-free operation," according to Broadcom. The new device also supports WiFi Direct and WiFi certified Miracast.

When a driver, for example, wants to stream an HD movie from his mobile device to rear-seat displays to entertain his kids, Miracast will facilitate multiple in-car displays.

Further, IHS analyst De Ambroggi adds that carmakers are now striving to keep up with the newest wireless technologies being integrated into mobile handsets and tablets.

In other words, asking if cars really need 802.11ac, which offers not only gigabit bandwidth but also a long range (probably more than a car needs), is the wrong question. Carmakers today are more worried about how their future cars can respond to the needs of new mobile devices that consumers will surely use inside their cars.

Bluetooth LE: extra cost?De Ambroggi is skeptical, however, about the integration of Bluetooth LE inside the combo chip, because it might seem "too futuristic" for some carmakers.

Broadcom's 5G WiFi for automotive is derived from the same mobility architectures that support smartphones and tablets. They are lower power by design relative to traditional access point architectures. The SDIO3 interface is used for mobility as it is lower power than current PCIe technologies used in traditional access point.

This part being targeted towards the automotive industry: does this suggest the power draw is somewhat lower than a standard Access Point kind of product? Do you know what digital interface the chip is supporting?

@junko, I'm not talking about all those features being in the handset.

But the vehicle can be designed with a infotainment connection interface, so that the dealer can install brand-new electronics (also sourced from the car manufacturer, which is in the profit interest of both manufacturer and dealer) into an automobile that spent 5 years in the manufacturing and design phase. Or have it installed at the factory, although that seems to needlessly reduce the dealer's opportunity to upsell the electronics.

What's important is to decouple electronic from mechanical design. A six-year design leadtime for infotainment systems just is untenable. Try to persist with that, and you WILL end up with all worthwhile features in the handset.

A side benefit is that consumers can bring old cars back to the dealer for an electronics upgrade. Yes I realize that aftermarket upgrades represent a loss of profit for the manufacturer and dealer -- but the first manufacturer to deal with that not by integrating the system so much that it can't be upgraded, but provide their own upgrade path, is going to have a huge hit with consumers.

ANT is really strong in medical and sports related applications. People are much more familiar with BT in their automobiles. While I'd like to see ANT move into autos, I suspect it will be BT LE that dominates.